Amid growing tension between Tehran and London over post-vote riots, an Iranian dignitary lashes out at the UK for freezing a large sum of Iranian assets.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, the foreign affairs advisor to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said in a televised program late Wednesday that London's hostile move has been unprecedented in recent years.

Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury Ian Pearson said last week that the British government had frozen “approximately GBR 976,110,000” worth of Iranian assets.

Velayati, a former foreign minister, said that the British government's move contradicted London's repeated claims of supporting human rights in Iran.

“The British government has frozen nearly one billion pounds of Iranian assets in England. This is in clear contradiction to what they claim. In their media they repeatedly claim to be advocates of human rights in Iran. They say they are defending the Iranian people but such a move is obviously against the Iranian nation because the assets belong to the people not to particular individuals.”

Over the past few weeks, the US and a certain number of European countries including Britain have expressed dismay over the recent political process in the country.

Post-election unrests were sparked after the Interior Ministry declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of the presidential election.

The streets of the capital, Tehran, and other cities have been the scene of illegal rallies in protest at the election results. The rallies have provoked unprecedented disorder in Iran over the past days but calm has relatively returned to the streets of the capital.

Tehran has blamed US and British media outlets for 'dramatizing' the recent post-election turmoil across the country by providing extensive coverage of the developments -- based on 'unreliable' sources such as Twitts and posts on Facebook -- and provoking the post-election violence.

On Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry ordered the second and third secretaries of the British embassy to leave Iran.

In a tit-for-tat move, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday that London was also expelling two Iranian diplomats.

Iran has also summoned ambassadors from Britain, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Canada to warn them against 'interfering' in the internal affairs of the country.

AR/MMN